Hi,

While back I got an broken Palit HD 2600 XT with artifacts. I though it would be an simple core + mem reflow and it'd work, but my judgement was veeery off....

I plugged the card in, artifacts as expected (R/G/B dots with some jittering around the screen, corrupted text). I have reflowed the memory thoroughly and the die of the core (I had recalled that these GPUs can suffer from bumpgate). Sadly, I only made it worse.

My only reasonable course of action was another reflow of memory and core. I did it but to no avail. Same artifacts.

Then I had an briliant idea of running the GPU without the cooler just to see if it would get detected. PC was booting normally until it just froze on POST code 98. With an known good GPU inside the mainboard works fine.

I have tried another board, but this one doesn't see this GPU completely. After some probing with the experience from my previous 2600XT I noticed a few shorted caps (see attachment "1" and "2"). Sadly, I couldn't find the cause of it so I looked at the caps on the core. All of the ones facing the PCIe slot show <0.8ohms (they should show at least >2ohms).

Now, my question is, is this card's core really dead?